A French tightrope walker has crossed the Seine in Paris 70 metres up in a breath-taking feat watched by cheering crowds on the Eiffel Tower and along the riverbanks.
Attached by a strap to a safety lanyard, 27-year-old Nathan Paulin slowly progressed barefoot on a line stretched across the river between the Eiffel Tower and the Chaillot Theatre.
VIDEO: 🇫🇷 French #tightrope walker #NathanPaulin delicately makes his way across a 600-metre long slackline between the #EiffelTower and Theatre National de Chaillot in Paris - a feat he himself describes as "not as easy as I thought" pic.twitter.com/mD2aHV5FGe
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) September 19, 2021
He stopped for a few breaks, sitting or lying on the rope.
"It wasn't easy walking 600 metres, concentrating, with everything around, the pressure ... but it was still beautiful," he said after the performance on Saturday.
He said obtaining the necessary authorisations had been a difficult for him, plus "the stress linked to the audience, the fact that there are a lot of people".
PHOTO: AFP
Paulin, holder of several world records, performed the feat to celebrate France's annual Heritage Day - when people are invited to visit historic buildings and monuments that are usually closed to the public.
He said his motivation was "mainly to do something beautiful and to share it and also to bring a new perspective on heritage, it is to make heritage come alive".
He had already crossed the River Seine on a tightrope, on Heritage Day in 2017.
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